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This offseason the Chicago Cubs weren’t able to chase any of the big name free agents because the team is already bogged down with big contracts for under-producing players.

And a lot of that blame has been given to general manager Jim Hendry. But it appears that spending came from ownership pressure.

“Look, I’ve been critical of Jim in the past,” Joe Cowley, of the Chicago Sun-Times, said on the Mully and Hanley Show. “And it wasn’t that he gained my sympathy or anything…My knock on and that I talked to him about was when all this stuff was going on you knew it was going on your resume, it was going to go on your watch. Why not come out and politely distance yourself from it…Basically he said ‘look, I didn’t fight it, but at the same time I’m not that type of guy, I’m not going to throw them under the bus. And plus, what G.M. doesn’t want to go out and be told to spend as much as you want…’ So mistakes were made, obviously the Milton Bradley thing was a mistake.

“But at the same time, I thought this offseason he earned the chance to continue to try and fix this mess. If he wouldn’t have had the offseason he did, which I thought was actually pretty sneaky good to be honest with you, getting [Matt] Garza for prospects…I’m not a guy that holds on to prospects like a lot of these Baseball America people…To me prospects are chess pieces and they’re pawns and they’re used to sacrifice, for the most part. I mean you know when a guy is going to be really good and you kind of do your best to keep him. But give me proven talent any day of the week. I appreciate the offseason [moves] he did and I think that’s what earns him the benefit of the doubt to clean up his own mess.”